REVIEW: “Paul Valéry’s strange novella, written during a period of existential crisis,” TLS
By Shaun Whiteside, TLS
The young André Breton was so bowled over by Paul Valéry’s genre-defying novella “La Soirée avec Monsieur Teste” (1896), he learnt it by heart and described it as the poet’s supreme accomplishment. It was written when Valéry had entered a period of existential crisis, soon to be exacerbated by the death of his mentor, Stéphane Mallarmé, which heralded a break from writing poetry that lasted two decades…